


Everything Will Be Okay

by orphan_account



Series: Not a Woman [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alive Kuina, Gen, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, also he gets to be badass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2779883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Did you know that the female body gets weaker than the male body when it grows up?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Child

A figure stands under the moonlight. The silhouettes of two swords, stuck in the ground, a distance away, and a second figure on the ground, a boy, join the first on a grassy hill.

"Damn! Shit!" the boy on the ground curses, a wail in his tone. "I can't accept this!"

The figure standing appears to be a young woman, with a guarded look on her face. "I'm the one who can't accept this," she says. "I should be crying."

The boy looks up at her with interest, but also disbelief. She had just bested him for the 2,001st time- why on Earth would  _she_ be crying?

"Did you know that the female body gets weaker than the male body when it grows up?" she begins. "And I, with this female body, will probably be overtaken by you soon. You always said you'd be the greatest swordsman in the world, and that's- that's not possible with this female body. I already knew that, and yet... yet I cannot accept this."

The boy sits up, and she looks off across the moonlit plains.

"Zoro, I also want to be the world's greatest swordsman, but this chest of mine is growing out. Do you... do you understand how much I despise this body?"

Zoro is silent.

"I feel like... I'm not a woman. I feel like this body is a stranger. This isn't me. Zoro, I feel so lost. I tried asking my father about this, about what I feel, and he told me I was mistaken."

"Mistaken?"

"He said I couldn't feel this way. Zoro, I don't want this. I'm running away tonight."

"Running away?!"

"Yes, I'm running away. I've packed some provisions. I'll run somewhere, hop onto a ship, do something. I'll leave this island. I'll leave and find a place that will accept me as what I am: a boy. And when I find that place, I'll train and train and train until I am strong, and then I will visit my father and tell him that I'm not a woman again, and he'll have to believe me."

"I don't want you to run away!" Zoro cries out.

"It's for the best," she- no, he- continues. He looks down at the blade clutched in his hand. "Zoro, take this." He extends the Wado Ichimonji to the younger boy. "When we meet again one day, on the ocean, let's fight again. I'll use the sword that I will have achieved with my own strength, and you will use this one to remind you of your losses. Is that okay?"

Zoro nods slowly. The older boy hands the sword to him.

"When we meet again," he says, "We'll be strong, and I'll beat you again, but it will be a long, hard battle, and we'll both be scarred, and we can tell all of our friends the story of how I beat you two thousand times." He smiles.

Zoro smiles with him, and stands. The two boys face each other, Zoro holds his new sword, and they don't worry a bit about how the elder's father will react to this all, because for now, everything will be okay.

 


	2. Grown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's grown now.

Zoro loves the thrill of the battlefield.

He loves being able to slice at his foes and watch them fall, he loves knowing that he is strong, that he's powerful enough now to protect the people he cares about. He relishes in this strength, and so he fights.

He loves this kind of fight too-- the battle he's waging now, when there's just him and countless Marine soldiers surrounding him, trying to get in between his steel blade defenses, the kind where he can hear explosions likely caused by Usopp and his captains' delighted shouts of attacks and the tell-tale sound of thousands of disembodied limbs hitting the earth at once.

A Marine gets too close to him, so Zoro cuts him down. Another approaches, and he meets the same fate. It's a simple enough rhythm, and it's one he gets used to.

Calls of "Roronoa Zoro!" cut above the rabble around him; his rhythm is almost broken. Zoro elects to ignore the call and instead cuts a wide arc with the intent to slice down a large portion of the Marines. His flying cut is stopped by a slice of another person's weapon. A small man stands there, where Zoro's attack used to be, holding a single sword in such a way that suggested he was the one to stop it. The man is pale-skinned and dark-haired, and is really only a slip of a thing. He couldn't be much taller than five-foot-four.

Zoro frowns. The dark-haired man felt much stronger than the others, and from his attire- which was nowhere near the standardized Marine uniform- he wasn't a footsoldier.

"Roronoa Zoro," the dark-haired man says, and it's the same voice as the one from before. The man sheathes his sword and approaches Zoro slowly. As he comes nearer, Zoro gets a better look at his face. His eyes seem too big for his face, and they're dark brown, near black. His nose is small and flat, his face heart-shaped. His attire is not much more than a simple yellow short-sleeved shirt and loose black pants. "It's a pleasure to see you once again. Men, stand down." The Marines reluctantly comply, and presumably run off to find other Straw Hats to fight.

"Who the hell are you?" Zoro asks without missing a beat once the Marines have scattered. Not that he particularly  _cares_  who this new opponent is, he mostly just asked for the other guy's sake.

The man laughs. "I sure have changed a lot, haven't I? I'm not surprised you don't recall me." He offers Zoro a hand. "My name is Leib."

Zoro doesn't stop frowning. He pushes the hand away from himself. "Leaf?"

"Leib," the man, Leib, corrects automatically. He doesn't seem fazed by Zoro's rejection. "I rather like it. It's better than Saber, which is good- oh, that's what my crewmates call me," he adds hastily.

"I don't know anyone named Leib." Zoro is beginning to grow frustrated with this Leib guy.

"But you knew a guy named Kuina, right?" Leib has a smug little grin on his face. "And you fought him. So fight me, too."

Realization dawns on Zoro's face. "You're an asshole," he replies, but he sheathes Shuusui. In Shuusui's stead, he draws Wadou. "You coulda called me."

"The thing is, Zoro, I did, several minutes ago," Leib replies as he unsheathes his own blade.

Zoro groans. "Oh, shut  _up_ , that's not what I meant," he spits out, but he's smiling a little as he does.

 


End file.
